FORT by Maison Ikkoku has always been on my checklist because I thought they had an interesting concept, incorporating omakase and cocktails into their menu. Located at Fort Canning Arts Centre, the dark exterior of the restaurant welcomed you to a full sight of a cocktail bar. Diners are seated around the bar, with an open-style kitchen in the corner. And since it is an open style concept, the menu tends to skew towards cold dishes so that you don’t walk out of the place smelling like fried chicken. The more popular Japanese centric Omakase 12-course menu is priced at $68++, where the servers will ask if there is anything you don’t eat or allergic too, which I will come to that later. Drinks revolved around cocktails, wine and champagne and similarly, there is no menu for that as well. The bartender will recreate your cocktail based on taste, base and ingredients and you can just welcome the surprise when they serve

The kitchen!

Gin with Cucumber and Japanese Grapes $27

I had asked for refreshing, gin and a combination of herbs and fruits so here is what I got. I like the easy-to-drink icy cocktail that tasted sweet and a little acidic. The grapes are great to munch on too! Definitely a good drink to start the meal with

Bourbon Whisky with Blackcurrent $27

The friend requested for sour, whisky and fruits. The result was a balanced bourbon based whisky which was pretty delicious as well

And then dinner service started

Chawanmushi with Century Egg

Salad with Pomelo and Sesame Sauce

Beef Tataki with Fried Garlic

Oyster with Yuzu Ponzu

Tamago with Mentaiko

Otoro Nigiri

Spicy Tuna Maki with Wasabi Sauce

Pea Soup with Wasabi Oil

Grilled Salmon Belly with Chef’s Sauce

Lamb Slider

So halfway through the meal, we went for drinks round two

Unagi Don

11 main dishes + one dessert. In all honesty, if you are looking for Shinji-like quality, then sorry lah, you are better off going elsewhere. But the food here generally is okay and halfway through the course, I was full. I barely made it to the end of the course. I like the chawanmushi, tamago, salmon belly, lamb slider and unagi don (though the friend said there was too much ginger sauce in it). The sushi rice used was too hard but the sashimi was decent. There was good flavour in the oyster but the oyster didn’t seem that fresh. The pea soup was really weird so we left it untouched. It probably is a dish with an acquired taste

And then we started with round 2 of drinks. I think when the drinks were served, we probably created lots of attention

Request was a strong smoky Whisky

Smoking (literally) Scotch Whisky with Dark Cherry $28

It was a beautiful old style whisky with a nice malty taste to it

I thought my drink was fanciful enough, so when he served my friend’s drink, I think all the phones came out. lol

Smoking Bourbon Whisky with Yuzu $28

Dessert came with birthday candle

I had no idea what dessert was, but it tasted like vanilla icecream with apple slices

I wouldn’t mind going back cos I think the quality of the drinks make up for it. Even though there was only one bartender which took a long while for the drinks to come (and cos there were so many other people), I enjoyed the overall concept and ambience of the place

FORT by Maison Ikkoku

Fort Canning Art Centre,

5 Cox Terrace, #01-02/03

Singapore 179620